CANNES, France — The actress Emmanuelle Seigner was having a little trouble articulating her answer to a question about her new film Venus In Fur (someone wanted to know if her character represented an angel of revenge) when her husband, Roman Polanski, turned to her and said, “They’re going to think you’re a dumb blond.”
There was laughter all around, but it made you think twice about what Polanski had just told a news conference Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival about Venus In Fur, a film in which an actress and her director develop a sado-masochistic relationship during the audition for a play. A reporter asked whether Polanski dominated his actors, or if they dominated him.
“I dominate them tremendously,” he said. “That’s what the film is about. Domination. I dominate them. Slap them sometimes when I can. But they never complain.”
It was another joke in a public forum in which Polanski kept asking the press to stop directing all of their questions at him — after all, his cinematographer was there, his composer, the author of the original play on which the film was based — and then somehow answering most of them, even if they went to other people.
It fit neatly into the theme of Venus In Fur, based on David Ives’ play and inspired by the novel by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. An actress (Seigner) talks her way into an audition with the play’s author and director (Mathieu Almaric, who looks so much like a young Polanski that he said, “My mother is coming tonight, and she’ll no doubt explain this to me.”). They begin playing roles in a story about obsession and dominance, and slowly their positions of power reverse.
“There is this macho element in his character which is really torn to pieces,” Polanski said. “And that was quite enjoyable, you know? With whatever people think or know about me. The ones who do know about me do know that I’m not this way, for example.”
The story combines many elements of Polanski’s filmography, which ranges from horror (The Fearless Vampire Killers, Rosemary’s Baby) to psychological drama (The Tenant, Bitter Moon) to out-and-out masterpieces such as Chinatown. “There are quite a lot of things that are reminiscent of my other films,” he said Saturday. “Is that good or not?”
Underlying all those themes was the elephant in the room: Polanski’s conviction in 1977 of raping and sodomizing a 13-year-old girl. He fled the U.S. before he could be sentenced, and has been living in exile in France ever since. It’s an old story now, and no one asked about it, but it coloured Polanski’s responses to a question about the relationship between the sexes, and how his thoughts on the matter have changed over the years.
“I think it’s a pity that now, offering flowers to a lady becomes indecent,” he replied. “I think that trying to level the gender, it’s purely idiotic.” He blamed the progress in medicine. “I think that the Pill has changed greatly the woman of our times. Muscularlizing her, how would you say that? And there are other elements. I think that chases the romance from our lives, and that’s a great pity.”
Venus In Fur is in competition at Cannes, and while few give it much chance of winning, Polanski acknowledged that prizes still mean a lot to him, and so does Cannes.
“I’ve been coming here since I was a film student in film school,” he said. “I had more fun when I was not well known.” When he became a filmmaker, he was met with mixed reactions. His first movie in competition, The Tenant (1976) was “disastrous.”
“It was extremely badly received here. We were virtually humiliated, all of us. Myself and the others. So when I was presenting The Pianist (2002), I split. Right after it I left and went back to Paris.” He got a call on the morning of the awards to tell him he had to come back, because he had won something.
“For what? If they are giving me an award, what are they giving? For directing? I lived long enough to know I can direct.” It turned out he won the Palme d’Or as best film, a moment he called as great as when he saw Harrison Ford accepting his Oscar for the same movie.
“I can’t tell you I don’t give a s—. It’s hypocrisy,” Polanski said. “I think to show a film here, you have to be in the competition, you have to be a sport. If I don’t get anything, I can say, ‘I got it already.’ ”